take me in one of your minutes
by smc-27
Summary: They break up on a Friday in the sunshine, her tanned legs peeking out under her shorts and his hair a mess from the wind. It's always hello, then goodbye. It's never stay. Nate/Serena


**A/N:** I suppose you could say this is AU after 3x21 (finale never happened...) Don't hold me to the timeline.

.....

They break up on a Friday in the sunshine, her tanned legs peeking out under her shorts and his hair a mess from the wind. The day is so _them_. He wonders if that's what makes it all feel so wrong.

She's tired, she says. She can't just stay in New York.

"I'll come with you."

"No," she says._ "_You can't."

He wants to know why not. Why can't he? It's summer. They'll go on an adventure - a road trip! - and then come back in the fall when his classes start, and she can get serious about what she's going to do with her life.

He should have known better than to say that. She doesn't want to think about it. Never has. She wants nownownow. Blair plans, Serena does. Nate's always been somewhere in the middle, holding Serena's hand, tugging her along little by little, just enough that she doesn't really realize that she's headed where they want her to go.

Not this time. She won't let him take her anywhere, wants to go be free, be something else, be away from him.

"I love you."

"I know, Nate. I just...can't."

She kisses him, and he tries to hang on to her. Slips his hand into her hair and runs his thumb over that spot just behind her ear that they both love. She takes a deep breath. He knows her well enough to know that this is it. She's leaving. She's leaving him.

"Serena, wait."

"It's not you," she says. "It's not you, Nate."

She kisses his cheek and walks away.

He wonders when he stopped being enough for her.

Wonders if he ever really was.

.....

He doesn't see her off, doesn't know where she's going off _to_. He supposes it doesn't matter.

He sits with a bottle of scotch and his best friend (who leaves for an hour with 'business' to attend to, and Nate's not an idiot; he knows where Chuck goes). It's quiet in their suite, neither saying anything; Nate doesn't want to talk, and Chuck acts like he doesn't care. They both know he does, of course. These two have been friends for too long for Nate not to know that Chuck is concerned.

"Let's go out."

Nate shakes his head. Going out won't end this feeling. Going out won't do anything but leave him with ringing ears and a hangover.

Going out won't stop him from thinking about her, wondering where she is, how she is.

He lays back in his bed, mind fuzzy with too much 24 year old scotch, and looks at the ceiling in the darkness.

Fitting, he thinks, she's running and he's standing still.

.....

He goes through the motions.

Goes to class. Goes to his internship at the law firm Grandfather approved. Goes to dinner with his mother, drinks with Chuck, coffee with Dan.

He finds a few of her things laying around; some clothes and makeup and a couple pairs of shoes. He puts them all in a box and puts it on the top shelf of his hall closet in the apartment he buys.

You know, she might come back for them someday.

(She might come back for him someday.)

.....

He knows it's stupid to get involved with Jenny. He knows it. It's _always_ been stupid to get involved with Jenny.

But she's there, and she's willing, and everything's so easy with her.

No, easy isn't the right word. Most of the time he feels like he's babysitting her, showing her how to behave and be mature, and sometimes it's difficult.

But she's there.

It goes on for a couple months, casually mostly, much to Chuck and Blair's dismay (the fact that he's seeing Jenny at all, not the fact that it's casual.)

One night when he's pissed at her and she's acting like a total bitch to Blair, he says something he shouldn't, right in front of Chuck and Blair.

(_"Why can't you be more like Serena?"_)

And so that ends that.

.....

The first time she comes home, he doesn't hear about it. He's told people that he doesn't care, they know he's lying, but they don't mention Serena's name, don't bring her up, and he's happy. He cares. He just doesn't want to know. He can't. If he hears she's back in town, he'll wait on her doorstep and make a fool of himself by begging or kissing her or telling her he's still in love with her, even after nine months of her being away.

He's trying to not to be pathetic. Some days it's harder than others.

He wakes up at 2:00 am when the bed dips. He has no idea how she got in. She smells like airplane and sandalwood and _Serena_, and he doesn't want to smile, but he can't help it.

"Hi," he whispers across the pillow.

"Hi." She reaches for his hand under the covers and twines their fingers together. "I came to see you first."

He doesn't know if that means anything.

He kisses her like it does.

She's home for eight days, and no one would even guess they really talk to one another, since they do their talking at night in her hotel room or his apartment.

She lays beneath the covers and tells him about Paris, where he learns she's been. She tells him about being a foot model, and how silly the whole thing is, giggles when he holds her foot in his hand, checking to see if it's as perfect as everyone thinks. (Of course it is.)

She gives him lemon candies, the kind her grandmother always had in the summer house, the kind Nate always stole and stuffed in his pockets. He smiles and kisses her neck, practically tackles her to the bed and god, he feels like they could do this for the rest of their lives.

She's gone on the eighth day when he wakes up. No note, no nothing. He doesn't know when she's going to be back, and his heart breaks all over again.

He wants her to stop doing this to him. He doesn't know what else he can do to make her.

.....

It's been a year since she left.

He doesn't know whether he wants time to slow down, or speed up.

.....

He hears through his mother that Serena has enrolled in school at Oxford, and he surprises himself with how bitter he sounds when he asks how long that'll last. She's studying linguistics, which makes him laugh, because that's just so something she'd do, pick something almost entirely useless and learn as much as she could about it. He can picture her giggling over the origins of words, or trying to use the most obscure ones in sentences, then laughing and explaining herself and winning everyone over.

Halfway through fall semester, she emails him. (_The oldest dictionary in the Oxford library is from 17-something and they keep it in this glass room with humidifiers and you have to put on gloves to even touch it. It's just a _book_! But it's really neat. Oxford is nice. You'd like it here, Nate._) There's no salutation, no sign off, no x's or o's like she used to write, and no multiple exclamation points. But somehow, it still sounds like her. He can picture her writing it.

(He can read between the lines. That last one says, _I miss you, Nate._)

And yeah, he'd like Oxford.

So he writes her back. (_Dictionaries are _important_, S. Don't they teach you that at that fancy school? I'd tell you what the oldest law dictionary at Columbia is, but...Yeah, I don't care. It's cold in New York. I miss summer._) He doesn't sign his off either, just hits send once he's checked that he hasn't spelled anything wrong.

(She'll be able to read between his lines. That last one says,_ I miss you too, Serena_.)

He thinks maybe these emails will become a regular thing.

.....

They don't.

.....

At Christmas, he runs into Eric at the Empire and asks how he's spending his holidays. Eric kind of mumbles and looks to the floor and stuffs his hand in his pocket and says something about London with the family.

Nate smiles and nods and says, "Give my best," but they both know that he means (wants) to say a hell of a lot more than that.

Eric, who Nate knows is up on the whole saga of he and Serena's relationship, just smiles and says he will.

That night, Nate informs Chuck that since Blair is in France for the holidays, maybe a vacation is in order. They end up in Dubai and exchange excessively extravagant gifts that neither of them really needs. But Nate wears his platinum Rolex every day, and he sits as Chuck is fitted for his gift, a new suit made by the custom designer he's been trying to get an appointment with for two years.

Nate goes two days without thinking of Serena, and he feels so guilty that he texts her on Christmas evening after too much of whatever alcohol it is Chuck has flowing, tells her he hopes she's having a good Christmas.

And he adds those taboo words at the end (_I miss you_) because he's had enough alcohol and heartache and time away from her.

"Nathaniel!" Chuck calls from across the VIP of this bar they're in. "Meet Tasha."

The gleam in Chuck's eye is unmistakable.

And Tasha is gorgeous.

So, like a few times before, he throws on a smile, sidles up next to her and leans over to speak in her ear.

(The text comes the next morning, and he pulls his arm out from beneath Tasha's head to reach for his phone.

_Merry Christmas! _

No _I miss you_.)

.....

The girl he meets at Columbia in February is completely unexpected. She's got this red hair that's so gorgeous other women are envious, long and wavy, almost curly, really, and dark green eyes and slender body. She's from Georgia, the accent and everything, and she's completely lost when he sees her with a campus map and asks if she needs help.

Carrie is somehow the anti-BlairSerenaJennyVanessa all in one girl, and he's not really sure how that's even possible, but he likes it. They stroll through campus with coffee in their hands and he listens to her explain that she's just moved to New York, and she's starting summer classes at Columbia in a few months, but she's just working right now at this country bar in Queens.

"Like Coyote Ugly?" he asks, his brow arched mischievously.

She rolls her eyes and shoves at him as she smiles. "You wanna see it?"

So that's how he finds himself at a run-down country 'saloon' on a Wednesday night, drinking Bud from the bottle and watching her pour shots of whiskey for a bunch of construction workers while some guy she tells him is Jason Aldean plays from the (honest to god) jukebox.

And a shot or two too much of Maker's Mark is what convinces him that going to her apartment at 2:00 am is a good idea.

It really is, though.

She's pretty awesome.

And maybe this girl will help him get over that other one.

.....

It's summer before Serena comes back into town. He's been with Carrie for months, and things are going well, so the blonde sitting on the sofa in Chuck's suite when he walks in one day? That throws a bit of a wrench in the works.

"Nate!" she cries happily, rushing over to him. He's barely set down his bag before her arms are around him, face pressed against his neck. "Hi."

"Hey," he whispers, pulling away, hands on her elbows as he looks at her. God, she's beautiful. "You're here."

"I know," she whispers, smiling at him. "Chuck's trying to kick me out."

"Chuck is trying to do work, and Serena is demanding attention," Chuck says, smirking though, because they all kind of love these times when Serena shows up in a whirlwind and takes over everyone's lives for a couple days. "Perhaps Nathaniel will entertain you for a while."

"_Perhaps_," Serena mocks, spinning around again to look at Nate. He just smiles and nods. "Chuck, can we do family dinner tonight?"

He nods and reaches for his phone. "I'll arrange it."

"You're the best," she says, walking over to kiss his cheek before grabbing her purse.

As they're walking towards the elevator, she loops her arm through Nate's and rests her head against his shoulder, her hair tickling his arm.

"I'm not the best?" he asks, pouting just enough to be cute.

She laughs and pushes him into the elevator. "Of course you are," she says quietly, twining their fingers together.

There's always a part of him that's completely shocked when she actually comes home. Sometimes he thinks she'll just stay gone forever, call once in a blue moon with some crazy story about her life, then disappear again until the next time. That she ever comes to New York at all is still strange to him.

If this is her home base, why can't it just be her home?

She talks about London and her apartment and the people she's met at school. She talks about the crazy woman who lives in her building who refers to Serena exclusively as 'The Ex-Pat'. She asks him all about school, and he shares stories about his professors and his classmates, and the guy on his lacrosse team who literally has a new girlfriend he claims to be in love with every week and a half.

It's pointless small talk, really, but he doesn't care, because she's walking next to him, smiling and laughing. She's in his life again, and he'll talk to her about whatever he can think of for as long as that's the case.

"So, who is she?" she finally asks as they stroll around the the boat pond at Central Park, sipping coffee.

He shrugs. "Who?"

She playfully punches his arm. "You know who," she giggles. "The girl who's got you smiling."

He laughs a little and shakes his head as he looks at his feet, then hers, the bright yellow polish on her toes.

She just doesn't get it. She's never gotten it. He's starting to believe she never will.

"You," he tells her seriously.

And he doesn't want to talk about Carrie with her. Carrie is his; someone only he really knows about. Blair doesn't approve and Chuck doesn't really have an opinion, other than to say that Carrie is definitely attractive. Nate wants to keep her to himself.

Or maybe he just doesn't want to let Serena know how serious his relationship is. He knows Blair must have said something anyway.

She leaves again after a week. They spend time together until she does. One day when she calls him, he's at Carries watching late night television on her DVR in the middle of the afternoon, and he ignores Serena's call. He feels terrible about it for the rest of the day, so he tells Carrie he has to go and she doesn't ask questions.

He and Serena don't kiss, not on the lips. He kisses her cheek as she and Blair stand at the curb beside the limo that'll take them to the airport. Blair's going for a visit.

Nate tries not to be bitter that Chuck's girl is leaving, but at least it's a given that she'll come back; at least there's a timeline on it.

Serena hugs him tight, her fingers threading through the hair at the back of his head. "I'll miss you."

He laughs and runs his hand down her back. "Promise?"

"Only if you promise to miss me, too," she says, smiling as she pulls away.

"Then you'll have to miss me a lot," he tells her. He's got a love/hate relationship with this joking thing they do, because he's glad they can, but at the same time, all he wants is to tell her that he loves her.

Because he does.

She kisses the side of his mouth, the corners of their lips touching. "I promise."

.....

"Where have you been?" Carrie asks laughingly when he walks into her apartment a couple days after Serena leaves.

She knows about Serena. She knows Serena is an ex, a 'big one', she says. Whatever that means. She knows Serena broke up with him and probably broke his heart. She knows that Serena has been in town.

And he's been pretty absent lately.

"Sorry. Lots going on. I didn't want to drag you into it," he says, hooking his arm around her waist.

He kisses her hair, lets the smell of her shampoo take him over a little bit.

It's not right, but it'll do.

"What? Did you miss me or something?" he asks, kissing the side of her neck.

"Not really," she jokes. She turns in his arms and smiles. "You?"

"Not at all," he says, and he thinks it might be a little too close to the truth.

.....

He's pretty shocked to see her name on his caller ID sometime in November when he's trying to write this essay he's got to finish and he's looking for reasons to procrastinate.

Of course, she calls at the perfect moment.

"Well, well," he says, leaning back in his chair, smiling to himself. "Look who remembers how to use a phone."

"Nate? Is that you? I can't hear you over the jerk who's making bad jokes," she says, then giggles. He loves that sound. "How are you?"

"I'm really good. How are you?"

"Bored. And homesick. And a little tired," she tells him.

He checks the time on his laptop and shakes his head. "Isn't it like, 3:00 am there? Of course you're tired." She lets out this little purring noise, and he recognizes it as the one she used to make all the time when she was in bed, getting ready to fall asleep. "So, homesick?"

"Yeah," she whispers. "And I thought...there's no one else I wanted to talk to, really."

He wonders if she does this on purpose, just to torture him.

.....

Serena comes home for Christmas and they spend days in Central Park, sipping cheap hot chocolate and coffee from street vendors, having snowball fights they're way too old to have.

And he tells her about Carrie. He doesn't know why, really, just that it feels wrong not to tell her. He wants her to know what's going on with him, and she's told him all about her life.

But then she gets really quiet and she's looking down, her hair falling around her face as they walk.

"Wow," she whispers. "You've been with her for a long time."

"Yeah," he says, shrugging one shoulder. "I mean, I guess."

"I want to meet her," Serena states, looking over at him.

He knows she's lying.

"Yeah. Maybe."

Serena leaves Boxing Day. Carrie comes back from Georgia on the 27th. Nate is relieved.

It doesn't take any time at all (just Carrie asking why he's moping) for him to realize that despite everything, Serena is still the most important woman in his life.

The really scary thing is that he honestly doesn't think she knows that.

Even scarier? He doesn't see it changing.

.....

He tries hard with Carrie.

Actually, he doesn't have to try at all. It's easy. There's no questioning of her feelings or worrying about her leaving. (Which is a nice change.)

But then there's Blair, back from her March break in London, wearing brand new designer clothes and sporting attitude in spades, standing in front of him in Chuck's suite.

"What are you doing slumming it with some girl from _Georgia_ when you're still in love with our best friend?"

He decides Blair is really annoying when she's right.

.....

He graduates in May with acceptance to Columbia Law and his family (mom, Grandfather) and friends (Chuck, Blair) in the audience.

It should feel amazing, but all he can think about is one stupid morning when he and Serena were laying in bed and she was talking about how crazy it would be when he graduated college, how she'd probably still be doing nothing. He'd kissed her and kissed her and kissed her and told her she could do whatever she wanted to do.

He thinks he'd like to take that statement back. He's not stupid enough to think she would have stayed, he just wouldn't have felt like he somehow pushed her away.

.....

He doesn't know she's back in New York until he sees her photograph on Page Six.

With Carter.

Kissing Carter.

He shouldn't be mad, really. He shouldn't.

It's just that New York was always theirs. New York was _NateandSerena's_. She and Carter had everywhere else - Greece, Fiji, Dubai, the whole world. New York belonged to _them_ and she's ruining it.

He finds her sitting on the floor outside his apartment, long legs and short dress and head tipped back against the wall, half-eaten, melted ice cream sitting in a dish next to her. Her eyes are closed. He hates her for being so fucking beautiful.

He kicks her foot, puts his hands on his hips and smiles as she opens her eyes.

The bottom line is, no matter what she does, how she hurts him, there's a corner (a big one) of his heart that will _alwaysalwaysalways_ be hers and hers alone.

"Hi," she says, looking up at him.

(Maybe he's bitter, but all he can think is that every time she says hello, she inevitably says goodbye, too.)

"You wanna come in? Or should I pull up some floor?" he asks teasingly.

She laughs and he holds his hand out. As soon as she's on her feet, he's hugging her. Or she's hugging him. It doesn't really matter with them, since they fit together so well and it's pretty much the most natural thing for him to be holding her.

He pushes open the door and she kicks off her heels once she's inside. He thinks it looks like she never left, her shoes on the floor, her bag hooked over the back of the chair at the counter in the kitchen. She's standing, looking out the window, then she turns back to him.

"I really missed this apartment," she says, smiling at him.

"Just the place?" he asks, crossing his arms.

"Mostly," she says as she sits down on the sofa. "Maybe you a little bit, too."

He walks over and sits down next to her, and she immediately slips her arm through his, leaning against him. He's finding it hard to remind himself that she has a boyfriend. Or whatever it is that Carter is to her.

It should freak him out how easy they fall into their friendship (relationship?) again. But it's always been like this, every time she left. And it was always her doing the leaving, him doing the waiting. It doesn't matter if she's gone for a week or two years. When she comes back, it's easy with them. They're just like that. He thinks it's their normal.

They order Chinese and eat straight from the containers, and she opens a bottle of wine he has laying around. She laughs at his stories of what it's like to be the third wheel to Chuck and Blair (completely ridiculous) and friends with Dan (more mellow, but the guy always has some drama in his relationship with Vanessa). Serena shakes her head and says that she misses everyone, and he bites his tongue so he doesn't just yell at her that she doesn't have to miss them. She doesn't have to miss this apartment. She doesn't have to miss him. He'd rather she didn't, actually.

"So, you're with Carter," he says after drink #2. It's usually around this point that they start getting really honest. "How's that working out?"

There's a bitterness in his voice that he won't apologize for, not after everything. Not after Carter and gambling, and Carter and Blair, and Carter and whisking Serena away, and Carter and leaving Serena, and Carter and trying to steal Serena from Nate. Bitterness is justified.

"It's...It's fine. It's good, I mean. He's grown up a lot. He graduated from Cambridge," she tells him. Nate rolls his eyes, but she doesn't notice. "We're good."

"Just good?" he asks. She shrugs her shoulder, the bare one that's not covered by this sexy one shoulder dress she's wearing. "Serena, _why_ are you with that guy?"

"Nate..."

"No," he says, shaking his head. "Don't make excuses. I actually want to know. What does...Why him?"

_What does he have that I don't? Why him and not me?_

"Carter and I have always..."

"Not _always_," he cuts her off, looking at her dangerously. She closes her eyes and moves closer to him, her knee brushing his thigh. "Not always, Serena."

"No," she whispers. "Not always." She turns again, rests her head on his shoulder. "It's just easy with him."

"It was easy with us," he reminds her. She scoffs. "I mean, when there wasn't Blair or Dan or Tripp or Jenny or...whatever. C'mon, Serena, you know..."

_You know I love you best. _

"After last time, with you and your girlfriend..."

"She's not my girlfriend anymore."

"I thought...You were just so happy, and I thought you were...I thought you were in love with her," she admits quietly. "I left and ran into Carter, and I though...I don't know what I thought. Maybe I _wasn't_ thinking."

He doesn't know why they do this to themselves, to each other.

"Are you thinking now?"

"I'm thinking...your shoulder is really comfortable," she says. He laughs a little and reaches for her hand, holding it against his thigh. "I _missed_ you, you know?"

"Missed you, too," he says, pressing a kiss to her hair. They sit there in the quiet for a little bit, just sipping their drinks and not saying anything. "Carrie was jealous of you."

"What?" she laughs.

He finishes his drink and takes both of their glasses, setting them on the table. He looks at her, hand slipping into her hair as she blinks at him. He eyes the curve of her collarbone, the pink of her lips.

"She knew I loved you," he says quietly.

Serena smiles and nibbles her bottom lip a little to try to hide it. "Loved? Past tense?"

He kisses her before she can stop him. (She wasn't going to anyway.) "Always tense."

She giggles as he lays her down on the sofa beneath him, his lips trailing down her neck to her shoulder. "Nate, there's no such thing as an _always_ tense," she tells him as her fingers thread through the hair at the back of his neck.

"Sure there is," he says.

Then his hand is tugging down the zipper of her dress, and she loses the will to argue the point any further.

.....

"When are you gonna stay?" he asks quietly, nose brushing against hers. "One day...one day you have to, right?"

"I dunno." She says it so casually that it makes him angry.

"Promise me."

She closes her eyes and presses her forehead against his.

"I can't."

.....

He doesn't know when she left, but it's like she was never there at all, hardly a trace of her in his place, just pink lipstick on a wine glass and the faint smell of her on his sheets.

.....

He wonders if it breaks her heart like it does his every time she goes.

.....

She graduates Oxford and everyone goes to London to see her. Everyone but him.

His invite sits tacked up on his fridge, her loopy writing on the back asking him to come.

Maybe it's childish, but he thinks about all the times he asked her to come home, all the times he asked her to stay and she didn't, and he decides that maybe in some sick, twisted way, this is his payback. He knows it doesn't mean anything.

She's Serena, and she's going to do whatever it is that she wants to do.

.....

It's been a year since he last saw her or heard from her. A full year.

He dated a girl, one of Blair's friends. But she was too much like Blair and not enough like Serena, and despite Blair's threats (none of which she followed through on) he broke up with the girl after a month and a half.

He spirals a little bit. Maybe her last visit was just too much, cheating on Carter (Nate doesn't care) and whatever. He knows they broke up (Blair managed to not-so-subtly drop that into a conversation) and Nate doesn't care what Serena's reasons were if he wasn't one of them. Given that she's not back in New York, he thinks it's safe to assume he wasn't.

Chuck, always a fan of a good spiral, stands by his friend, makes sure he gets home alright or puts him up at The Empire after a particularly rough night. They drink together on nights when Chuck can, and he doesn't ask Nate any questions.

Sometimes he gets answers anyway.

"She just...she doesn't even _care_," Nate says one night after too much scotch.

Chuck doesn't ask who or what Nate is talking about. He just nods his head sagely, sips his drink. "It's hard for her to care. Always has been."

"Not with me," Nate says quietly.

He knows there's no argument for that.

.....

She turns up on his doorstep in the middle of March, hair wet, clothes drenched from the downpour outside, and bags at her feet. And she's crying.

He pulls her inside immediately. No matter what they've been through, what she's put him through or any of the rest of it, they both know he's never going to turn her away. Never. So he lets her cry against him, clutching his shirt at his back in her fists, runs his hand over her hair and up and down her back.

"Serena," he says after a while, when they're sitting on his sofa, her practically on top of him.

"It's my mom," she says quietly, eyes clouded with tears again.

She doesn't have to say anything more, and he pulls her onto his lap and holds her tight.

The cancer wasn't real the first time. It was the second time. It is now.

.....

They spend two full days in his apartment. She doesn't leave his bed the first day, and he does only to bring her food and coffee and grab movies from the living room they can watch in the bedroom. Nothing happens. She doesn't kiss him and he's not stupid enough to kiss her. They just curl up together, and he lets her cry when she needs to, doesn't say anything about it if she's trying to hide it.

And given that her phone hasn't rung once since she showed up, he thinks that no one else knows she's in New York. She came to him. That makes him feel better than it probably should, but after all the leaving, it's nice to know that she comes back sometimes, too. He'd forgotten that part a little bit.

"Shouldn't you go see her?" he asks on day three, before he has to go to class and she's still laying in his bed. She shakes her head. "Serena."

"Not yet," she whispers. "I can't yet."

"Okay," he says quietly. Without even thinking, he leans over and kisses her, just as a goodbye. She's still got her eyes closed when he pulls away, and there's a little smile on her lips. "Sorry."

She shakes her head and pulls the covers up a little more. "Don't be."

He doesn't bother asking what she means by that, if she means anything. He leaves the apartment for the day and it takes everything in him not to call Blair or Lily or Eric and tell them Serena's home.

Maybe it's selfish, but he wants her to himself just a little longer.

And honestly, he thinks he deserves it.

.....

He gets out of class and he gets a text from Serena telling him to come to her mom's place. He's proud of her. It's stupid, because she obviously came to New York to see her mom. She should have done it sooner, but he's glad she's doing it now.

When he walks into the van der Woodsen apartment, he sees Serena, Lily and Eric all sitting in the living room, Serena on the floor and Lily running her hand through her daughter's hair. He's greeted with three tired, scared smiles, and he walks over, kissing Lily's cheeks and shaking Eric's hand. He helps Serena off the floor and she sits next to him on the opposite sofa, and they all just talk. Just talk about nothing and whatever trivial things that don't include words like 'treatment' or 'cancer' or 'the odds'. Nate knows it's not his place to ask Lily any of the more intense questions about her health.

But when he's in the kitchen fixing hot cocoa (on Serena's insistence; apparently he makes the best cocoa out of any of them), Lily comes in and has a hushed conversation.

"Thank you, Nate," she says, laying her hand on his forearm. "She always needs a little more help than she likes to admit."

Nate manages a soft laugh and nods his head. "I really don't mind," he admits.

"I know that," Lily says. She looks upward, fighting tears, and Nate doesn't know what to do, so he rests his hand over hers. "I just want her to be happy."

For the first time, he thinks her prognosis might not be that good at all.

"I do too," he says quietly.

She curls her fingers around his, fingertips pressing against his palm, forces him to look at her. "You are wonderful, Nate," she says with conviction. "And she knows that, too."

Something inside him shifts, and he starts to believe that maybe their story doesn't have to be a tragedy.

.....

When they get back to his apartment, she's kissing him before he's even got the door closed. But it's not a demanding kiss at all. It's soft, like a thank you against his lips, and so he holds her gently, as though she might break if his touch is too hard on her skin.

"I _miss_ you, Nate," she whispers, pressing her face against his neck.

"I know, S. I miss you, too," he says, running a soothing hand up and down her back. "Your mom is worried about you."

"I'm worried about her," she argues. "And I knew she was talking about me with you."

He laughs quietly and pulls her a little further into the apartment. She reaches for his hand and walks them to the bedroom. It's a disaster, her suitcases scattered around, her clothes strewn about. It's almost like when they nearly lived together. He likes it.

But then she sits down at the edge of the bed and pulls her shirt over her head, dropping onto the floor.

"Serena."

"Nate, please," she says, reaching for his hand. "I just...I want you, okay? I just want you."

He knows it's a bad idea, that he'll only be left with a broken heart for the hundredth time when she leaves again. But he loves her, and he stopped fighting it a long time ago. And the way she feels beneath him, against him, kissing him, whispering his name...it's almost _enough_.

.....

She stays well into July, splitting her time between her mom's side and Nate's.

They haven't put a label on what they are. He has no idea. They're friends, but they sleep in the same bed, and they sleep together, and they kiss all the time. They're a couple, but they don't call one another boyfriend or girlfriend.

He's pretty sure he'd marry her tomorrow if she asked.

Lily doesn't get any better, but she doesn't get any worse, either, so they take that as a positive and try not to count the days. Nate holds Serena's hand every time there's a doctor's appointment and she's waiting on the news. He talks with Eric and helps Lily with things she can't do and is generally a fourth member of the family, and he likes it that way.

They go to the Hamptons for a long weekend, the four of them.

He and Serena are sitting out on the big lawn, her between his legs, back to his chest. It's completely dark, except for moonlight and some stars, and he thinks this is the perfect time to say the one word he's wanted to say for months.

"Stay," he says softly, lips against the shell of her ear. She doesn't tense in his arms, doesn't stand up, doesn't start yelling. She doesn't immediately tell him that she can't, and he knows that has to mean something.

"Why?" she whispers as she weaves her fingers together with his over her stomach.

He smiles. "Because I love you."

She takes a deep breath and leans her head against his a little more. "Okay," she says. "I'll stay. I want to stay." She turns her head to kiss him, and he's smiling the entire time. "I love you, too."

"Yeah?" Forgive him for wanting to make sure.

She nods, turns and pushes him onto his back, lays herself on top of him. "Always tense."

He's laughing when she kisses him.

**_-Fin-_**


End file.
